both to be and not to be.

Now since all ideas are derived from impressions, and are nothing but
copies and representations of them, whatever is true of the one must be
acknowledged concerning the other. Impressions and ideas differ only in
their strength and vivacity. The foregoing conclusion is not founded on
any particular degree of vivacity. It cannot therefore be affected by
any variation in that particular. An idea is a weaker impression; and
as a strong impression must necessarily have a determinate quantity and
quality, the case must be the same with its copy or representative.

Thirdly, it is a principle generally received in philosophy that
everything in nature is individual, and that it is utterly absurd to
suppose a triangle really existent, which has no precise proportion of
sides and angles. If this therefore be absurd in fact and reality, it
must also be absurd in idea; since nothing of which we can form a clear
and distinct idea is absurd and impossible. But to form the idea of an
object, and to form an idea simply, is the same thing; the reference
of the idea to an object being an extraneous denomination, of which in
itself it bears no mark or character. Now as it is impossible to form an
idea of an object, that is possest of quantity and quality, and yet
is possest of no precise degree of either; it follows that there is an
equal impossibility of forming an idea, that is not limited and confined
in both these particulars. Abstract ideas are therefore in themselves
individual, however they may become general in their representation.
The image in the mind is only that of a particular object, though the
application of it in our reasoning be the same, as if it were universal.

This application of ideas beyond their nature proceeds from our
collecting all their possible degrees of quantity and quality in such an
imperfect manner as may serve the purposes of life, which is the second
proposition I proposed to explain. When we have found a resemblance
[Footnote 2.] among several objects, that often occur to us, we apply
the same name to all of them, whatever differences we may observe in the
degrees of their quantity and quality, and whatever other differences
may appear among them. After we have acquired a custom of this kind, the
hearing of that name revives the idea of one of these objects, and makes
the imagination conceive it with all its particular circumstances and
proportions. But as the same word is